Labour’s latest isolation of Ken and Lutfur

The mayoral elections may be more than 15 months away but the starting gun has been fired in the race to be Labour’s candidate for May 2014. Actually, ever since Lutfur Rahman pummelled Labour in the October 2010 polls, the party has been wondering how to stop him the second time around.

Labour pitbull John Biggs is seen by many as the front runner, and he’s desperate for a shot at one last big job in London politics, but he is likely to have two main rivals.

Helal Abbas, who disappointed last time round, has has been sounding members out for another stab at it; politics being politics, of course, Abbas has heard a lot of people saying, “Yes, go for it–I’ll back you… .” Even Shiraj Haque, the millionaire housing association tenant who backed Lutfur with cash, insults and smears against Abbas in 2010 has been encouraging his former foe after falling out with the Mayor.

And then there are some who think that Mile End East councillor Rachael Saunders will have a go. I hope she does: she’s an excellent networker who has done a superb job of promoting young people, particularly young women, to get involved in Tower Hamlets politics.

The Labour group leader, Josh Peck, is also being encouraged to put himself forward, but I suspect he’d see the mayoralty as a possible block on a Westminster career.

And then there those who want to see Lutfur become the Labour candidate.

One of those is Ken Livingstone, and at a meeting of the Organisational sub-committee of the party’s National Executive Committee today, the emphasis was very much on the word ‘one’. I understand that during an agenda item to set the timetable for the selection of Labour’s mayoral candidate in Tower Hamlets, Ken suggested a delay to give Lutfur a chance of getting re-admitted. Former NEC member Luke Akehurst reported on Twitter tonight that Ken was in a “minority of one”. I understand this committee comprises 28 of the 33 NEC members and that even Dennis Skinner laughed Ken’s proposal out of the room. (Lutfur’s ally from 2010, Christine Shawcroft, does not apparently sit on the committee.)

Instead, they agreed the following dates:

February 22: closing date for applications

March 4: interviews for shortlist by a panel that will also decide how many are shortlised.

April 4: polling of Tower Hamlets party membership.

The Labour membership list has been fixed as six months before January 15, ie July 15, 2012.

So all this leaves Lutfur very much in the cold again but because he controls the levers of power and money, he’s in a strong position. His latest wheeze, reported by the East London Advertiser here, is the creation of 17 “community champion coordinators” who will be selected to manage pots of £10,000 in each of the 17 wards, every one of them earmarked for “community projects”. Whether this is another localised vote-buying operation in the run up to May 2014 is yet to be seen: we need to know who these champions will be and how and by whom they will be selected.

The explanation of all this was included in a letter from Lutfur today. I’ve copied the text of it below, but I would just draw your attention to the sixth paragraph, which reveals the curious evolution of Lutfur the mere council leader in the early part of 2010 to Our Mayor and Dear Leader in 2013. Yes, we taxpayers in Tower Hamlets are now his citizens…Hail to the Chief! (Hat tip, Peter Golds)

Dear Sir/Madam,

In May of 2012 I wrote updating you on our Local Strategic Partnership, outlining the changes we made in order to meet the new economic climate and the changing brief from the government. In the letter I made assurances to update you further on our new local governance structures once these were formulated further.

Over the latter half of 2012 we have been working hard to develop a local structure that is truly bottom up and provides our residents with a genuine community offer. I am delighted now to be able to provide you with further detail on these developments.

A true community offer has to be more than words on a plan and has to have buy-in from residents and service providers, to enable us all to be strong now and for the future. The focus on the new structures has been on “local”, trying to think more deeply about what is meaningful to those that live here; the boundary that encompasses local schools, places of worship, the physical environment where people live, work and play in and a place that is meaningful to their daily lives. As well as the place it is important to consider how those places work for our residents as cohesive communities in which we deliver the very best public services. The new structures will create a greater ability to tailor services to the particular needs of a local area, with clearer criteria for prioritising services in the context of reduced spending and more services run by residents on behalf of residents, creating community ownership.

Today I am delighted to be launching the Mayor’s Community Champion Coordinators as part of our launch of the Local Community Ward Forums (LCWFs). There will be 17 Local Community Ward Forums – one in each of the borough’s wards – which will replace the 8 Local Area Partnership Steering Groups.

Each LCWF will be meeting 3 times per year. These meetings will be public meetings which are open to all residents and run by residents.

The overarching aim of the new structure is to create a new relationship of accountability; this is both greater accountability with myself and my citizens of Tower Hamlets and between the citizens and their public service providers. The first meeting will be for local residents to set local priorities, the second to co-produce solutions against those priorities and commission activity, and the third meeting will be to check the outcomes of these priorities and activities. The community offer is about doing things differently; the responsibility on the residents is to be active participants and for public service providers to respond effectively.

The LCWFs will be co-ordinated by local Community Champion Coordinators who will act as local organisers for their communities. Unlike elected members they will not represent their communities but be active community facilitators with a passion for creating change and prosperity for their communities. We were very successful in recruiting over 100 volunteers for the Olympics over the summer and these residents played a critical role in ensuring a smooth games time for our borough, welcoming visitors and showing the passion we have for Tower Hamlets. In December 2012 we were delighted to receive the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Volunteering Award 2012 for our Olympic and Paralympic Community Champions, a great recognition of their efforts and hard work. I have every confidence that we will recruit further volunteers to become Community Champion Coordinators to support our local structures. If you would like further information on how to apply to become a Coordinator or are interested in getting a better idea of the role then please visit www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/volunteer.

The public sector has to make extraordinary levels of savings and there is no better time than now to ensure that our citizens are not only empowered but given the support to take more control and grow their own ideas and solutions to local problems. With this in mind I am extremely delighted to be able to announce that every one of the 17 LCWFs will receive a local budget of at least £10k that will support residents to commission activity in the LCWFs through Participatory Budgeting. This is closely linked into our desire to co-produce local solutions to local issues. Local people know best what their own areas need and often have fantastic ideas about how to shape where they live. By giving funding to local people, I hope that we’ll build a better borough for everyone.

In April 2013 we hope to be able to host the first of our Local Community Ward Forums and I welcome your support in making this a great success for Tower Hamlets.

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22 Responses

If Labour have learnt anything then they will need to stay away from Abbas as a candidate – John Biggs I think was the number 1 choice last time around but the ‘phools’ in Labour decided to go for 3rd choice Abbas in the hope of challenging Lutfur for the Bengali vote.

Biggs would be a real good choice.

Whatever Labour do, they have enough time to get it right and not make a complete balls up like last as they still are wiping off those eggs from their faces nearly 3 years on

I reckon Cllr. Shiria Khatun would make the most effective and powerful Mayor/ess! No doubt she will be putting in her application and then revealing all to her potential voting members with her fake smiling gestures. However, I wonder if this time around she will be constantly bombarding us with her headlines, reminding us of her former position as ‘Advisor to GLA Mayor Ken Livingstone’?
History tells us that Labour in Tower Hamlets needs targets such as Shiria to justify equality in gender and ethnicity balance incase they get challenged of such, as accusations will not be shortcoming. They have never permitted credible Bangladeshi candidates to get a ‘real’ chance which is what gives the likes of the ‘Shiria’s’ in this world a novelty platform. Wonder what thoughts you may have upon this Ted?

I would like to see John Biggs as mayor. He’s a decent man who is not interested in satisfying his own ego (unlike our Dear Leader).

The only issue would be we’d miss him on the GLA. He’s one of the few that actually makes Johnson look uncomfortable and cuts through his affable buffoon act to reveal the lack of competence behind it.

Sheraz- Maybe you should stand, since you know and comment on everything. The Labour fight will be between Abbas and John Biggs, a lot of people are not eager on John Biggs,as he has just won a massive election only 8 months ago.

Mile End Resident – sorry if I offended your friend/colleague/long distant relative by the way of uncles wife’s sisters sons cousin!!!

If you look closely – I mainly tend to comment on responses by buffoons such as yourself, not genrally for the sake of it.

I will re-iterate what many have now known to be the truth that just because Abbas is Bengali…. like myself… does not mean he was and is the best choice for Labour.

We need a professional – this was something Abbas shown he was not when he launched that absurd ‘child-like’ report about Lutfur…. the infamous dossier soundling like he was grassing on a kid in the playground. The language used in that dossier was piss-poor to say the least.

As much as it hurts to say – there are no competant Bengali candidates to take the role, the operative word being ‘competant’ not the race.

To whom do you refer to when you say others – can you COMPETENTLY answer that simple question???

I will tell you why I think Biggs is possibly more competent than your Abbas… whatever he may be to you, firstly the fact that he is in the GLA making your other Buffon character sake, that of Bojo look like a twat, but the fact that he was voted in first choice as the Labour candidate for Mayor, but idiots within Labour chose to put THIRD place Abbas up for it due to him being Bengali…. that does not bode well for people like you thinking he is competent, rather chosen to appeal to a certain group…… which ended very badly… can you comprehend that????

I will compare Abbas to David Beckham (wait for it, I know some will be think wtf) in that Real Madrid bought him NOT for his footballing prowess as he is apparently known for, but his marketing possibilities – he made up his £25 million transfer fee by shirt sales alone.

Can you see the similar parralels to what Labour wanted to do with Abbas, but it completely bombed.

Applogies for the footy reference but our Mile End might find the rest of the above hard to COMPETANTLY COMPREHEND hence having to treat him/her like an ‘eeeejiot’

Apologies – was thinking he came first after Lutfur decided to go independent and they held another vote, whatever the case, clearly not enough people thought Abbas was competent enough to be second either!

Why bother having an election at all when the shortlisting will be tampered with? Members will be given a choice between a range of anti Lutfur New Labourite politicians of varying degrees of competence that’s not a choice as far as I’m concerned or to quote Galloway if a backside had three cheeks.

I don’t think we can continue to rely on elder statesmen to come to the rescue Keith, Abbas Biggs it would be nice to see newer people like Amy, Carli and Rachael stand for a senior position. I’ve read assessments of two of those people and they’ve got outstanding ratings and we don’t utilise them at all. Personally I want to vote for Rachael but the primary motive ought to be ousting Rahman and John Biggs is best placed to do that.

Never mind this selection nonsense John should be imposed as the candidate now so we can go out and start campaigning. In case anybody hasn’t notice that is what the Mayor and his team is doing. There are two people in Tower Hamlets who can beat Lutfur in my opinion one of them is John and the other one is Jim Fitzpatrick. As far as I’m aware Jim isn’t interested so it’s obvious who ought to be selected as the Labour candidate.

That didn’t have to be the case had we had competent people running this party then we could have sorted this selection out ages ago enabling you to spend the remaining time raising a profile. I don’t think we have time for that anymore. Then there’s the timetable, which will undoubtedly get pushed back further. How on earth can you have a selection of a Mayoral candidate across a large geographical area on a Thursday weekday for a start?

Beating the Mayor is a big task and the council composition is also important. When exactly do they envisage selecting/imposing (preferably the latter) Cllrs? The earliest the process can start is May and you have to factor in appeals. All of these issues were discussed a few months ago and a motion passed and evidently ignored, meh.

Rachael is an android with the charisma of a cauliflower – is she the best Labour’s got?? Shiria, maybe, at least she’s got some character but I’d wait until we can do a Stoke and scrap the whole mayor thing altogether!

Well, it’s time to start the petition rather than ‘looking for candidates’ isn’t it?

What is faintly amusing [if there’s anything funny about the borough] is that the pols who agitated for ‘no elected mayor’ are now completely silent, because it’s become an extra ‘job for the [mainly] boys’. Still the one thing you can count on them for is total inconsistency.

So I reckon that we, the proles, will have to start it, no-one in the ‘political class’ will, even if they supported it vociferously only a couple of years ago…

Well that isn’t an option is it. I’m not sure why you think she’s an android and i’m more surprised that you think Shiria would make a better mayoral candidate. Is it actually based on anything other than who you find more amiable? John will make a fantastic mayor and has the best chance of winning.

THR – don’t tell me your related to Abbas in some form as to have offended you?

The only magic I wish I could do is to have the ability to disconnect any internet connection you have when even considering replying nonsense on here…. that will be the first power I dish out when I become the Mayor!

Funny, no-one mentions the dog that does not bark. I supported the no-elected-mayor campaign, because, in my opinion much of the political and official ‘class’ in Tower Hamlets is divided, polarised, immature, opaque democratically-illiterate [when not apathetic], dysfunctional and self-serving. Sorry, there are other adjectives, but that’s probably enough for the present, isn’t it? There are honourable exceptions, but not enough to change the culture.

Therefore it’s ‘better’ that these folks try to learn to work together in the old cabinet system, though I believe the smarter parts of the population should decant themselves into neighbouring boroughs for a couple of decades to avoid the results of that particular ‘work experience’.

So, in short, a plague on all prospective candidates and let’s concentrate on a referendum to remove the post, as Stoke on Trent and Hartlepool, for example. Some hope.

I agree. I thought the old system was better. How do we initiate a referendum? I assume labour would be too embarrassed to support a no mayor campaign (didn’t they come up with the idea?). I fear that the only way to win such a referendum would be to allow our current Mayor to make a complete pig’s ear of his term. How else?

I’d put money on most if not all of these so called “local communities” the same community as the one our dear looting Lutfur and his diverse and tallented cabinet all belong to…

I get the impression the net is closing in on our Dear Leader. An extract from Hansard for you Ted…

HANSARD columns 293 WH – 294 WH 13th january 2013

“Other councils have seen even more striking and worrying examples, and I particularly want to refer to the London borough of Tower Hamlets. That authority has a directly elected mayor. He is an independent, but it is well known that he has close connections with the Respect party. The mayor is supported by sufficient independent members to ensure that he has the blocking third to get the necessary budgets and mayoral policies through.

However, throughout his time, there has been a history of vexatious complaints against members of the opposition Conservative and Labour parties—Labour is actually the largest party—made by members of the mayor’s cabinet. Councillors appointed by the mayor to his cabinet have made complaints particularly against the leaders of the Labour and Conservative groups. Sometimes the complaints have not come to fruition; in other circumstances, they have. That causes real concern.

The monitoring officer of Tower Hamlets, Isabella Freeman, is also the assistant chief executive for legal services, and the monitoring officer is also the person who advises the mayor. There is now a situation in which the monitoring officer, who advises the mayor and polices the regime, regularly investigates complaints by a member of the mayor’s cabinet.

On the other hand, complaints against members of the group who support the mayor have not been taken forward for investigation, which inevitably raises concerns as to who monitors the monitoring officers in such cases.

In that case, the monitoring officer is herself in dispute with her employer—the authority—and there is apparently an industrial tribunal case ongoing, but the monitoring officer still sits in and carries out her functions, even though they involve councillors who may be witnesses to those proceedings.

Tower Hamlets has reached the extraordinary stage of members from several parties passing a motion to have certain disciplinary steps taken in relation to the monitoring officer. We might have thought that the monitoring officer would have withdrawn from the meeting at that point; instead, she insisted on remaining, and noted what was said by every member, which hardly gives the impression of an unbiased, open and transparent approach.

Freedom of information requests in relation to only two of the complaints have revealed that some £6,000 of public money was spent on investigating a complaint against the leader of the Conservative group and that some £12,000 was spent in relation to a complaint alleged against the leader of the Labour group. No such complaints have been taken forward in the same way against the group that supports the mayor.

That may be a particularly egregious example. At the same time, however, members raised complaints with the monitoring officer about a highly partisan publication, East End Life, which is the subject of great controversy, and the monitoring officer responded that everything that the mayor had put in that publication was in order. The same monitoring officer gave advice that the mayor was not obliged to answer certain questions from members in the council in relation to the exercise of his functions because that might infringe his human rights.

That, frankly, brings the standards regime, which we all want properly and proportionately exercised, into serious disrepute. That is not in anyone’s interests.

The matter that has arisen in relation to Tower Hamlets seems, on the face of it, to be frankly scandalous. It involves one important case that comes back to the whistleblower point. An opposition councillor raised an issue concerning an applicant for a senior post in the council, and it was demonstrated that that applicant’s CV was inaccurate in an important and material respect. The applicant had been obliged to resign from a previous employment, and that was not placed on their CV. That achieved a degree of national and regional publicity, not surprisingly.

The result was a complaint by the same member of the mayor’s cabinet, who was a frequent source of the complaints, against that member. That was investigated and the member set out in considerable detail their side of the matter. The hearing took place within weeks of the abolition of the Standards Board regime, and the member was not present. The upshot—I have to be careful what I say—was that within days of the regime being swept away, rightly, by the will of Parliament, the standards committee, which, I understand, consisted predominantly of members who supported the mayor, referred the matter to the first-tier tribunal, where it remains. The purported view of that seems to be that in relation to a complaint that was some two and a half to three years old—never mind its the merits—there was a desire, frankly, to invoke suspension of a leading critic of the mayor.

That was why it was being taken to the first-tier tribunal, which refused to entertain it. Now, I gather, there may be attempts to appeal that.
That sort of abuse of the system brings local government into disrepute. It is right to have that on the public record, because that is not how the system is intended to be used. I hope that the Minister will confirm that the Government’s intention has been that, as of 1 July, the ability to suspend or disqualify a member should not be exercised in the standards regime, but that instead such a power is exercisable when the criminal offence of failing to disclose a pecuniary interest, which came into force on the same day, is committed. The case that I mentioned had nothing to do with a pecuniary interest of any kind; a councillor was doing what many people would regard as their duty by pointing out something that might have been seriously misleading in relation to an important and sensitive public appointment.

The fact that that member should have hanging over their head the prospect of defending themselves in legal proceedings before a first-tier tribunal—brought, of course, at public expense—when it is known, and was known when the decision was taken, that the power to suspend was going to be removed, is an abuse of the system. I hope that we can make it clear and restate that it was never Parliament’s intention that the transitional provisions that were brought into place when the Standards Board regime was abolished should be used in that way. That, too, is an important example of where we need to look more closely at how things work.”

English local government can be a puttying cesspit devoid of genuine democracy and public accountability. It usually happens where Labour have control. Lib Dims and Tory’s are not so bad as Labour often is.

The alleged behaviour of the Mayor and his gang are 100% typical Labour tactics making me think the national Labour Party must have circulated a handbook describing those tactics. Don’t overlook Tony Blair’s Local Government Act 2000 which established the foundations for today’s dictatorial arrogance resembling a third-world banana republic.

There is no independent regulator of local government residents and councillors can appeal to. The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) is a pathetic powerless irrelevance with no ability in law to achieve anything except the spending of public funds on its self.

The national government’s Department of Communities & Local Government (DCLG) is totally disinterested in the antics of English local government.

I found Isabella Freeman to be pleasant, personally, but extremely weak as Slough Borough Council’s deputy head of legal and lacking the moral courage to confront irregularities including the bullying of council staff by top officials. Her unquestioning poodle-type subservience to a top official suggested, certainly to me, she was unsuitable to serve the public in any local government position.

Aggrieved persons have only one lawful remedy – a judicial review challenge at the High Court.

Its time the public are given the legal right to chuck-out unaccountable and unelected staff, incapable of getting a job in the private sector, who parasitically abuse the public sector for their personal enrichment. Local government needs quality and dedicated staff not those with inflated illusions of their meagre abilities whilst demanding indecent sums of public money for pitiful efforts. Oh, sorry I forgot … local government exists to serve the public not political parties, cliques or vested interests.